A man was shot in Kirkland House today(I live in Claverly, which is about 3 blocks away).

This was big news throughout the country for a while — even taking the #1 spot in google search trends. Having access to both Harvard mailing lists and news reports, it was immensely surprising how differently the event was characterized in the two spheres.

At Harvard, the student reaction was overwhelmingly one of concern for student safety, and for the impacts that such an event would bring to the community. The news media on the other hand, jumped on the fact that someone was shot at Harvard. Several of the sources I read(including the Huffington Post) mistakenly reported that the victim was a Harvard student. This sensationalistic confusion seems difficult to justify to me, as every official line I read from Harvard administrators, and from the Crimson, took pains to emphasize the fact that the status and id of the victim was unknown. The Huffington Post claim was especially egregious, since the Boston Globe article they linked to specifically said that the victim was not known to be a Harvard Student.

The exaggerated reporting was disturbing on another level because, overwhelming, the outside world honed in on the fact that this shooting happened at Harvard. Maybe I am really paranoid, but all the responses I read (on Reddit, on the huffington post) seemed to indicate that much of the public interest in the whole thing is due to a gleeful and slightly malicious interest in seeing if Harvard’s fallen from its pedestal of privilege. This is understandable, and not really new to me, but it’s still shocking to see how much underlying hatred random people have for the “pampered pussies” that I am apparently a part of.

A lot of political discourse in the past year, especially with regards to the 2008 election, have focused on the alienation of intellectuals from the average person’s life. But really, who’s to blame for that?